An ambitious if uneven attempt to write passionately in a minor key about commonplace yet central life experiences.
Responsibility for a dying parent, taking pleasure in a first baby, marriage to a man with kids and an angry ex-wife. Despite her gift for gorgeous prose, Phillips (Shelter, 1994, etc.) is not entirely successful in breathing new life into this combination of domestic dramas so familiar in fiction and women's lives today.
Kate Tateman, a poet in Boston, is pregnant. Involved with the expectant father, Matt, for eight months, she cannot marry him until his divorce is final. Not that his first marriage's breakup was Kate's fault—the ex-wife left first—but Kate must deal with Matt's two young sons' difficulties adjusting to her. Meanwhile, in Virginia, Kate's mother, Katherine, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Mother and daughter are close, with few frictions, and no one questions that Kate will be Katherine's primary caretaker when the time comes. As Kate's pregnancy progresses, so does Katherine's cancer, and she moves in with Kate and Matt in Boston. The baby is born, Matt and Kate marry, Matt's sons make noisy, sometimes heartbreaking demands, Katherine weakens. Kate feeds, launders, nurtures. Her often thought-provoking musings are refreshingly lacking in cynicism, although her interspersed memories of a visit to India the year before, when she was free of responsibility, seem a bit contrived. At her best, Phillips builds scenes through sensory details and sharp dialogue. Kate's passionate love for her infant son is particularly well rendered, as is her deep tenderness toward her mother. Unfortunately, though, the story itself drags, thanks in part to needlessly repetitive bits of basic information. Meanwhile, Kate's relationship with Matt, who lacks a defined personality, never rises above lukewarm. And because Phillips insulates Kate from any character flaws, anger, or even much regret, Kate feels a little too perfect, too smart, her righteousness somewhat off-putting. No Pampers for her baby.
An ambitious if uneven attempt to write passionately in a minor key about commonplace yet central life experiences.Pub Date: May 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-40194-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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